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SK Innovation, Korea’s largest energy chemical company, is accelerating its transition to an eco-friendly business model by focusing on the plastic recycling business and expanding its range of eco-friendly products. As part of this initiative, the company launched the “Sanhaejinmi” campaign with the goal of raising awareness about the environmental impact of plastic waste and promoting daily eco-friendly practices. The company’s management and employees participated in creating a campaign song and a music video, which were received well by the general public, especially through social media events. Another key strategy was the implementation of an intensive practice period called “Sanhaejinmi Week, during which employees were encouraged to share photos of their eco-friendly practices on Instagram. Local business sites also played a crucial role by motivating stakeholders in their respective locations to participate in campaign activities. In 2022, the campaign achieved significant engagement, with 266,389 people participating in plogging, which resulted in the collection of a total of 1,202,744 kg of garbage. The post-campaign survey confirmed the success of the campaign in influencing citizens’ awareness of the environmental pollution crisis.

Based on the stakeholder theory and the CSR communication model, which are informed by models in public relations, this study proposed and examined two key factors of social media strategies that contribute to raising the public's positive perception of stakeholder engagement in CSR, which in turn leads to positive CSR reputation and behavioral intentions. A 2(communication on CSR building strategies: top-down vs. co-creation) x 2 (social media communication strategy: responsive communication vs. involvement communication strategy) full factorial design online experiment was conducted. The results showed that communication about the co-creative approach of CSR development leads to positive perceptions of stakeholder CSR engagement. Stakeholder involvement social media communication strategies also elicited positive perceptions of stakeholder engagement in CSR. The use of stakeholder involvement communication strategies on social media has been shown to partially offset the negative impact of a top-down approach in CSR development. This study demonstrates the impact of two proposed factors on CSR outcomes by linking stakeholder engagement perceptions of CSR with CSR reputation, supportive communication intentions, and purchase intentions, which are in part mediated by trust in commitment. These findings enhance our understanding of how to effectively engage stakeholders in CSR on social media by providing both theoretical and practical implications.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has consistently received the attention of scholars and practitioners in various academic disciplines, including economics, politics, society, and public relations. In this context, the nature of CSR in developing countries becomes an emerging question because of the business expansion of multinational corporations (MNCs) in these countries. Vietnam is a country with a unique political, economic, and sociocultural context, experiencing rapid economic growth despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this paper explores the CSR approaches, government cooperation, and CSR activities of “big-six” enterprises from different industries between 2018 to 2022 using a content analysis to capture and analyze the CSR initiatives. Our research is the first to highlight some theoretical frameworks in the Vietnamese context that contribute to developing global CSR debates.

In the field of PR, finding ways to simplify and convey complex information to the general public is a challenging task. From this perspective, LG Electronics’ event “LG ThinQ Escape Cafe,” aimed at making it easier to introduce the smart home platform ThinQ to Generation Z, was a successful endeavor. The planning and execution were meticulously aligned with the target audience’s perspective, effectively stimulating consumers’ emotions. As a result, the event was extended to a season 2, and participants’ voluntary content naturally gained exposure on online portals. In particular, the success of this event provides solutions for companies on how they should convey technology-related content that consumers find difficult to acquire or use. Based on this LG Electronics event, this article aims to provide valuable insight on how to convey complex technology-related information and plan events that can garner a positive response from Generation Z.

Social media have emerged as a critical element in the crisis communication process and demand new thinking for organizations facing crises. Stealing thunder is a proactive crisis communication strategy in which an organization voluntarily releases crisis information before it is revealed by a third party such as news media. Although organizations are increasingly using stealing thunder to minimize the impact of crises, little empirical data is available to understand how online users process crises when an organization proactively release the crisis information.Therefore, one objective of the current study was to test the efficacy of stealing thunder and identify attitudinal and behavioral outcome variables in an online context (i.e., Facebook). A second objective was to examine the underlying mechanism of stealing thunder and behavioral outcome variables by testing a serial mediation model. The results in an online experiment showed that Facebook users gave more favorable evaluationswhen a pharmaceutical company proactively released the crisis information (severe side effects of a drug) than when the information was released by Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A serial mediation model revealed that crisis responsibility and organizational reputation serially mediated the relationships between stealing thunder and behavioral outcomes.

The study aimed to test the influence of a certified seal indicating corporate social responsibility (CSR) on perceived CSR, attitude, and supportive behavioral intention. To test the hypotheses of the study, a post-test-only experiment with two conditions (presence vs. absence of CSR-certified seal) was executed using an online experiment, and we recruited participants (n = 157) across the United States. The results indicated that the presence of the CSR-certified seal in the annual report was more effective in generating better perceived CSR evaluation, positive attitude toward the corporation, and behavior intention among the participants than the absence of the CSR-certified seal in the same annual report. A serial mediation test showed that a CSR-certified seal led to increased behavioral intention through perceived CSR and attitudes. Theoretical and managerial implications are also discussed.

An online survey dealing with the purchase of potentially risky consumer products,genetically modified foods (n=379), examined behavioral intention within the framework of the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010). In addition to attitude and social norms, which are subsumed under the theory, predictors examined included cognitive and affective risk perceptions, systematic versus heuristic processing, and two personality traits: need for cognition and need for affect (specifically, the avoidance and approach sub-dimensions identified by Maio & Esses, 2001). Four hypotheses were tested and supported. High cognitive and affective risk perceptions were negatively related to attitude, adherence to social norms and purchase intent. High need for cognition was positively related to systematic processing, while negatively related to heuristic processing. High need for affect avoidance was positively related to heuristic processing, while high need for affect approach was positively related to systematic processing. Finally, higher systematic processing was positively related to both cognitive risk perception and affective risk perception, while higher heuristic processing was not. Awareness was included as a possible explanatory variable that helped explain purchase intent. In order to investigate the relationships between the key variables more closely, hierarchical regression analyses examined the combined effects of the focal and explanatory variable on purchase intent. The final regression model in the study, which explained 29.2% of the variance, suggested that purchase intention was best explained by the need for affect avoidance, low affective risk perceptions, positive attitude, and conformity to social norms. This study proposed a framework in which personality traits based on psychological needs (need for cognition and need for affect) led to different styles of processing. Then, two forms of risk perception (cognitive and affective) together were shown to influence purchase intention ofcommon technologically enhanced consumer goods. The study underscored the importance of looking into both affective and cognitive risk perceptions examining purchase intention for risky products,genetically modified organisms (GMO) foods. This study also illustrated the potential practical importance of the two sub-dimensions of need for affect identified in the literature, suggesting that each can possibly influence the processing of persuasive messages and risk perceptions and ultimately consumer actions.

This paper examines how the intensity of social media use affects anti-fat attitudes by considering the mediating effects of three main attributions—internal, social, and physical—on obesity stigma. Participants were 213 college students in the United States who completed a paper survey. A mediation analysis model using the PROCESS macro (Model 4) was employed to test the research question and hypotheses. Intensity of social media use did not show a relationship with internal and social causes, but it did show a significant relationship with physical causes. Physical causes had a negative mediating effect on anti-fat attitudes. This implies that the higher the intensity of social media use, the higher the physical causes and the lower the anti-fat attitudes. The intensity of social media use had no direct relationship with anti-fat attitudes. Theoretical and practical implications were suggested.

The current study examines how collegiate institutions in a Confucius value-laden society engage in communication with its internal public, from the perspective of the school public relations approach using five dimensions of relational constructs (trust, control mutuality, relational satisfaction, relational commitment, face-work). Interviews with 26 undergraduate students at a 4-year institution in Korea revealed that students identified three relationships in their OPR, namely, university-student, departmentstudent, and professor-student. Findings show that students identified the university's main goal ought to be providing employment opportunities to college students; and department-student relationship as impersonal and one-directional. In terms of the professor-student relationship, students identified that trust and commitment are established with professors' expertise and efforts, but the presence of imbalanced power due to social and contextual factors; wanting to be closer to professors but feeling distant and keeping distance intentionally to maintain professors' and their own faces are at work. Findings contribute to the literature on OPR, School Public Relations and relational constructs; suggestions for follow-up studies and implications are discussed.

The purpose of this study is to identify activists, their communicative behaviors, and the effects of these behaviors on crisis communication in the new media landscape. Adopting a new theoretical framework based on problem-solving characteristics, openness, activeness, and time or history, in the situational theory of problem solving, the current study demonstrates that activists in a crisis situation are more likely to actively engage in information acquisition, selection, and transmission than other publics. In addition, this study finds that activists in a crisis could affect an organization negatively in terms of strong attribution of crisis responsibility to the organization, negative reputation, and less supportive behavioral intentions. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.